


pulse to pulse

by ephemera (incognitajones)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Soul Bond, cameos by Bodhi & Draven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:34:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26502982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incognitajones/pseuds/ephemera
Summary: After nearly dying together on the sands of Scarif, Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor are somehow linked, with painful consequences: able to sense each other’s feelings and thoughts. The only explanation Jyn can think of is that the legendary Force bonds her mother used to tell stories of are real.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Comments: 115
Kudos: 201
Collections: WIP Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please check out the [gorgeous art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26521210) **red_b_rackham** created for this story!

Cassian’s bones burned from the marrow out and lightning crackled along his nerves. Everything was chaos: darkness blasted by bolts of green fire on the back of his eyelids, noise crashing over his head. He didn’t know if he was alive or dead, though he leaned toward alive based on how much pain he was in. If he was dead, shouldn’t it stop hurting?

Or he was trapped in a nightmare. Yes, that must be it. Because he remembered hearing Kay die, but he couldn’t remember what had happened to Jyn. 

He forced his eyes open a bare slit and was blinded by sickening light. A nightmare—that would explain the dizzying glare washing over everything. A vast green glow obliterated his vision again and he suppressed a cry of pain. 

“Cassian?” A faint voice called to him and he strained to turn his head toward it despite the stabbing in his neck. 

“Jyn?” He thrashed, coming closer to the surface of the dream, but his arms were restrained and people stood over him, vague pillars of dark shadow forcing him back down.

What had happened to Bodhi? To the Guardians from Jedha? And all of the troopers they’d led to—Scarif, that’s where they’d gone... 

This was a dream, it had to be a dream, he refused to believe that he’d been captured along with Jyn. No. Not after they’d succeeded in transmitting the plans, made it down off the tower... He twisted, trying to get away, and screamed. Pain spiked at the base of his neck like someone had driven a knife into it and his right side was on fire from his thigh up to the middle of his spine. Voices shouting around him wouldn’t resolve into words he could understand. Agony was all he felt, exploding in his head as he fought to get free. 

“Cassian!” Jyn’s voice again, desperately raw and panicked in a way he’d never heard it earlier, not even when Jedha was collapsing around them. “Let me through, you scum-sucking pus heads!”

That sounded like her, though. 

He cranked his head in her direction with an effort that made him gasp, straining to see something through the blinding agony. A small blurred shadow in motion focused into Jyn shoving her way through what seemed like an impenetrable wall of droid limbs and medtechs, dropping to her knees beside the hovering stretcher he was on. He thrashed on the cot, managing to heave onto his side, and reached out toward her. “Jyn?”

“I’m here, I’m here.” Jyn grabbed his shoulders, her hands digging into his muscles, and at last he could take a deep breath. He gasped in relief. “Just breathe.”

She slid her hands up to either side of his jaw, holding him still, leaned forward and settled her forehead against his. And as soon as her fingers touched his bare skin, the pain vanished. The relief was astronomical, overwhelming. He still hurt, but it was only the burn of physical injuries: strained muscles, cracked bones, scrapes and wounds that hadn’t had bacta yet—all of which he could feel now that the fire in his head was extinguished. Cassian gasped again and nearly collapsed, unbalanced from the disappearance of the pain he’d been braced against like a strong wind. 

Jyn’s hands slipped away from his face, back to his shoulders, and she smiled down at him. Her eyes shone brightly but he couldn’t tell if it was from joy or tears. Or maybe both. “Better?”

He nodded, unable to push any words past the choking in his throat. Jyn pushed his tangled, sweaty hair out of his eyes. “They need to treat you now, so I’m going to step back, okay? But I’ll be right here in the room.”

Another voice behind her objected and she hissed over her shoulder, “Do you want him to have another seizure? Then keep going, asshole!” Her hand returned to cradle his cheek and she brushed her thumb over his face. Cassian couldn't remember the last time another human being had touched him so intimately, unprompted. 

“Let them help you, Cassian.”

He nodded and took a deep breath, preparing for the pain. As soon as she stepped away from his side it re-invaded his senses, though duller than before—an ache rather than a piercing stab.

The medics descended on him then, and he couldn't see Jyn’s deceptively small frame through the looming crowd of bodies. But he could tell she was still there and that gave him enough strength to endure. 

Why did it hurt so badly? He tried to force back the panic and stay calm—no use worrying until he knew more about what had happened. But he couldn’t remember anything after stumbling onto the sand with Jyn, reaching for her hand and holding her tightly. 

Cassian had been seriously wounded before. He knew that, even without a head injury, the mind often forgot or blurred the surrounding moments. It would make sense if he couldn’t remember anything after getting shot and falling from the archive tower. But he did…

Who’d picked them up? Bodhi, or another Alliance pilot who saw them just in time? And how could Jyn have managed to haul him to safety? She was strong, but he outweighed her by quite a bit, and she’d been hurt too. 

But wondering about logistics only distracted him from the pain for so long, and then his panic rose in response. How could it hurt so much? His body felt rigidly paralyzed—but it couldn’t be, or he wouldn’t feel anything. And the pain was universal, everywhere: it constricted his lungs when he tried to breathe, it stabbed through his muscles making them contract and spasm. His pulse throbbed in his temples and his eyes wouldn’t focus. The actual injury in his leg, the one the medics seemed most concerned with, hardly registered.

Panic and fear were overwhelming him in a way that hadn’t happened since he was a child. Cassian had to know what was going on, he had to understand… he strained to breathe again, his vision going white at the edges.

“You’re making it worse!” Jyn’s furious voice cut through the haze and he tried to turn his head toward it. 

Then the sedatives they must have given him began to kick in and he felt himself slipping under, his mind blurring and his limbs gone heavy, unresponsive. He fought it, terrified, thrashing against the grip on his arms until a cool hand touched his—Jyn, it was Jyn, she was back and he knew that she’d stay with him, as though he could hear her whispering in his ear, a calming litany of _it’s okay, it’s alright, you’ll be okay, I won’t leave, just rest_ and he let go, gave in, and sank into the darkness.

Cassian opened his eyes to a blinding white halo around a light panel overhead. It was flickering, which made his head ache and his eyes water, so he closed them again. He concentrated on breathing, though his ribs hurt in a way that felt at once piercing and faraway through the drugs. 

“What happened?” Cassian asked. 

He didn’t realize he already knew Jyn was there until she answered, and he was completely unsurprised by her presence. 

“We’re on _Home One_. Bodhi got us off the beach just in time. You’ve been in a medical coma for a couple of days and in the meantime, the Emperor sent the Death Star to Yavin 4. Our star fighters managed to destroy it, but since the base was compromised everyone had to scramble for evac.”

That was… a lot to take in. Part of Cassian was already looking ahead, trying to predict the Empire’s next steps. Another part of him had noticed that Jyn said “our fighters” and hoped that meant what he thought it might. But mostly, he felt a deep sense of satisfaction at their success. They’d won, dammit, Jyn had forced the Alliance to take the chance and they’d won. It had cost them, more than he knew yet and probably more than they could easily afford, but still—this could be the beginning of a real rebellion.

Cassian opened his eyes again and found his vision slightly less blurry. He pivoted his head slowly, gingerly, on the pillow toward the right.

And there was Jyn. He blinked away an afterimage of the last time he’d seen her—filthy, exhausted, covered in sand. She had a half-healed cut on her cheek, and wore a grey shirt he was pretty sure came out of his kitbag. Her hair was clean and pulled back in the same style of low knot she’d worn before. She was smiling at him, but something made him think she wasn’t as happy as she looked. 

His fingers twitched. He wanted to—he felt like he needed to reach out and touch her. Hold her hand. But that was childish, so he didn’t. 

“What’s wrong?” His throat was raspy and dry as though he’d swallowed half the sand of Scarif.

She blinked and her face settled into a carefully composed impassiveness. But there was still something underneath, some worry that she was hiding. “Nothing important right now.”

“Jyn. Tell me.” He tried to sound stern, but the undercurrent of anxiety in his voice made it more plaintive than demanding. “How many survivors?”

She looked down at her knees. “From the ground team on Scarif? Counting you and me, there were five. Bodhi, Tonc, and Maddel made it. Baze and Chirrut died. And I don’t know if you remember what happened to Kay…?”

Cassian closed his eyes again and hoped the roughness in his voice sounded like fatigue instead of tears. “I remember the vault.”

He thought of all the people packed into the small Imperial shuttle who’d watched Jyn give her awkward, heartfelt speech, who’d murmured “May the Force be with us” back to her. He’d known them all by name and reputation at the least; some of them were long-time colleagues and a few of them were friends. All of them but two, gone now. 

Jyn didn’t seem any less tense when he opened his eyes, though. “What else is there?” He didn’t know why he was so sure she’d left something out; yes, Cassian was good at knowing when people were hiding something, but he wasn’t a mind reader and he’d first met this woman a few days ago. She shouldn't seem this transparent to him. 

She still didn’t meet his eyes, staring instead at the string of numbers cascading across the monitor attached to his pod. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine.” At least he had been until a minute ago. Now he could feel the pain lying in wait, like a predator stalking him. His medication must be running low. 

“Good.” She smiled at him, blindingly bright. Her relief seemed out of proportion, almost as though she was worried that she’d hurt him. Cassian cast his mind back to the last thing he could remember, stumbling through the sand with Jyn half-carrying him. She might have aggravated his injuries by dragging him along, he supposed, but if she’d left him behind he wouldn't have survived. 

Just then the pain squeezed his head again like a vise, a giant hand about to tighten and crush it. He hunched his shoulders inward around a cry of agony he couldn’t let escape.

“Cassian, stop.” Jyn’s hand curved around the side of his face, blessedly cool. “Just lie still for a moment. Let me—” her other hand reached for his, and he couldn’t help gripping it tight as a lifeline. His body relaxed into the bliss of no pain.

“I’m so sorry.” He could barely hear her whisper.

“Sorry about what?” He should let go of her hand, but he couldn’t seem to make his fingers unlock from their grip on hers.

“Please, listen to me, no matter how crazy this sounds.” Jyn took a deep, shuddering breath as though she was on the verge of tears, though her face was still pale and composed. “I think—I think something happened, and now we’re connected in the Force.”

Cassian didn’t laugh, because it was obvious that Jyn really believed what she was saying. “Why would you think that?” he asked cautiously, feeling his way into this conversation, almost like an interrogation.

She scowled at him as though she knew he was humouring her. “In the medbay. I don’t know if you remember it, but you were seizing. They couldn’t—” she swallowed and looked down. “They couldn’t make it stop. You were screaming…”

Cassian flinched inwardly. 

“I was right there, they hadn’t taken me away yet, and I knew how much pain you were in. Because I could feel it in myself.” She clenched her other fist over her heart. “And as soon as you knew I was there—as soon as I touched you—you stopped screaming.” 

Cassian didn’t know what to say. He remembered, vaguely, the crushing weight that felt like it was sitting on his chest and only lifted when Jyn was beside him. He’d thought it was a trauma thing, an emotional reaction to the fact that she was the only survivor there with him: a weakness, but an understandable one.

“I’m not making it up,” she rushed to add. “The medics will tell you the same thing. Your vitals improved whenever we were touching.” She blinked again, and looked down at their joined hands. “It took them a while to accept it. But finally, they let me stay in here with you, because it was—it was bad when they tried to make me leave.”

“I thought I was in a coma.” 

She nodded. “Bad for me, I mean.” Her hand twitched in his and he automatically wrapped his fingers tighter around it. A flash of memory or imagination showed him Jyn grey-faced with agony, hunched over herself as though she’d been shot.

Cassian shut his eyes for a minute, reassessing. Everything he knew told him to reject this ridiculous idea instantly. But Jyn believed it, and she was no fool. 

“So why?” he asked again. “Or how? What could have done this to us?”

“I don’t know.” Jyn shook her head in frustration. “I know you’re not a believer, but my mother was. She used to tell me stories of people who were—bonded, tied together by the Force somehow. I think this might have happened because we were about to die. Or thought we were.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the curtain blocking off this alcove, and hunched forward, closer to him. From under her shirt, she pulled out something hanging from a thong around her neck—a pendant of some kind. “This belonged to my mother. It’s a chunk of kyber, or it was… When I met Chirrut, he talked about it. I remember feeling it burn when we were on the beach.” 

Cassian remembered that too, when he and Jyn were clinging to each other, and he’d closed his eyes because he no longer wanted to see what was coming. In fact, it was the very last thing he remembered: a sharp point of fire between their bodies, like a hot coal or a laser knife stabbing his chest. At the time, he’d assumed it was the first pang of death.

Jyn was still curled forward, close to him. She smelled like soap and bacta and a sharp trace of—herself, her essence, was the only way he could express it. The familiarity of it soothed Cassian in an instinctive way, as an animal recognized the safety of its home. 

“Now it’s cracked, see?” He blinked and saw that she was dangling the pendant closer to him. “And it used to be clear…” He focused on the stone. Whatever it had been like before, it was certainly cloudy now, with a fault through it from top to bottom running through words engraved on it that his vision was too blurry to read right now.

He closed his eyes, suddenly drained and exhausted. This explanation might be objectively impossible, but obviously, something had happened. So he asked Jyn, “What does that mean?”

“I told you. I think we’re connected in the Force.”

“But what does that mean?” he asked, his voice cracking slightly with frustration. “Why would we both hurt unless we’re touching?” He lifted their entwined hands a millimetre off the pod.

She shook her head. “I don’t know! I’ve been trying to remember anything that might help, but all I know are old stories about Force bonds that were strained or severed causing pain. I was able to feel it when you hurt, I could tell when you woke up…”

Cassian blamed the fact that he was injured, on pain medication, and sleep-deprived for taking so long to catch on to the implications of that statement. But after another breath, it hit him. “You can read my mind?”

“No!” Jyn protested. “That’s not it!”

Still, a bolt of shame and terror drove through him like an iron spike. His head was a fucking toxic waste dump he didn’t want Jyn anywhere near. He’d always been wary of the rumoured Jedi mind-scrambling tricks, all spies were, but if Jyn could actually see the black sludge of memories inside him— 

A crushing weight on his chest made it harder to draw breath and that added to his panic. How much did she know? How long before she discovered something so repellent, so disgusting, that she couldn’t even look at him any more? A wave of shame rolled through his body. He yanked his hand out of her grip and pulled it away to lie limp on the slick plastic cover of the pod. Jyn’s face whitened and he could see tension collect in her forehead and eyes, but she didn’t move to touch him again. 

Cassian felt fine. Why shouldn’t he? Jyn was right there, after all, less than an arm’s length away, even if they weren’t touching. But the longer the moment stretched out, the more uncomfortable he felt. It was psychosomatic, obviously—he didn’t actually need to slide his hand back across and feel the contact of her skin press against his.

In an effort to distract himself from the headache beginning to pound behind his eyes, he focused his attention on the irrational part of this thing. Which was all of it. “I still don’t understand,” he said, hating the plaintive note of confusion in his voice.

“I keep telling you, I don’t either,” Jyn snapped. “All I know is that when I woke up, I felt awful. I thought it was me, at first, but once I figured out I wasn’t injured that badly, something made me look for you. And you were thrashing around, in agony—and I could feel it, and I knew that I could make it better.” Her eyes sparked with anger. “I had to push a bunch of idiots out of the way, but I managed to get there.”

“So you’re saying—” The words scraped in his raw throat, and he had to cough for a long moment before he could go on. “Because we almost died together, the Force decided to link us. And if something interferes with that, we’ll be in a lot of pain until we re-establish it.” Through close physical contact, his mind helpfully added.

“It’s the only thing I can think of.” She gave a little one-shouldered shrug. Her voice was tight and strained, her eyes glassy with tears again. “Look, Cassian, I know this is not what you want. But please don’t hurt yourself to prove a point. I can tell you’re in pain.” 

He sighed. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, she was right. And if he was making her feel even a faint echo of his own physical pain, that was cruel and unfair to her. He closed his eyes and turned his head away to avoid looking at her while he slowly extended his right hand, palm up. When Jyn laid her own across it, it was like plunging into cool water on a hot day: soothing relief rippled over his whole body from the point where they touched. She squeezed his hand tighter and with the pain gone he was able to focus again.

Of course, all he could focus on was this fucked-up situation. Cassian had never paid much attention to metaphysical questions; he wasn’t a believer in any religion. If you’d asked him before today, he’d have said that the Force was a dangerous concept, used all too often to reconcile people to their fate and convince them it was impossible to change it. Now it seemed to have taken his revenge on him in the most ironic way possible, by trapping him and Jyn together. 

Jyn’s hand twitched in his grasp and her breath caught with a held-in sob. “I’m sorry, Cassian.” She sounded wretchedly unhappy and when he opened his eyes to look back at her, her misery was visible on her face. 

As much as he hated this, he couldn’t help but reassure her. “It’s not your fault. I just wish we knew what to expect. Is there anyone who might know more? Any sources we could research?”

“Chirrut would have. And Baze, maybe. But they’re both gone.” A surge of grief rolled through her and into him, tightening his chest. “I don’t know anyone else to ask.”

There had been dozens, if not hundreds, of Force cults on Jedha. Cassian had no idea what any of them believed about Force bonds, but— “Bodhi might know.”

Jyn’s eyes brightened. “That’s a good idea.” 

She lifted her other hand to cup his cheek and Cassian leaned into it, barely restraining himself from nuzzling her calloused palm. He still felt lost and unmoored, but when Jyn squeezed his hand again, as unjustified as it might be, he couldn’t help but feel reassured. 

“We’ll figure this out,” he told her, hoping he wasn’t lying.

“Huh. Bonded? R-really?” Bodhi leaned forward in his chair and looked back and forth between the two of them—Cassian with his leg in a bacta traction tank and his upper body only slightly elevated, Jyn perched less than comfortably on the corner of his medical cot. “That’s interesting. I’d never have thought...” His voice trailed off into a cough and he gripped the back of his neck in an embarrassed tell. Cassian wasn’t insulted, though; he and Jyn did make a very unlikely bonded pair.

“It’s the only theory that makes sense,” Jyn said. “I asked Skywalker, but he barely knows anything about the Force, let alone obscure bonds. Have you heard anything about them? Were they common on Jedha?”

“No.” Bodhi shook his head. “They’re quite rare even among believers, although my great-grandfather was bonded to someone. I remember my grandmother telling me stories about it.”

“How did it happen?” Cassian demanded. Jyn didn’t say anything, but her grip on his hand twitched and tightened for an instant.

“They were both miners. I think they’d been friends for years, but not inseparable or anything like that. Then there was a cave-in when they were opening up a new vein of the kyber mines, and the two of them were trapped together for two days until they could be dug out. After that, they lived together for the rest of their lives.”

Their whole lives? Cassian was momentarily stunned. “How did that work? Did they marry? Or did they already have families?”

“It was a long time ago, and I wasn’t very interested in the details,” Bodhi protested. “It was after my grandmother was born, though, because she said she remembered moving into a new house so that her father and his bondmate could be together. He ended up being like an uncle to her, I guess.” 

“Were they Force-sensitive before it happened?” Cassian could tell that Jyn was getting anxious from the rising pitch of her voice. “Were they able to be apart? How did they manage to work?”

Bodhi lifted his hands in a signal of ignorance. “No idea. Again, I was a kid so I never paid much attention. It was just boring family history stuff.” He smoothed a nervous hand over his pulled-back hair. “I’m sorry, I wish I could be more help.”

“That’s alright,” Cassian said. “At least we know it’s not unprecedented.” But his heart sank at the thought of Jyn being cuffed to him like a prisoner. 

Jyn got up from her seat, pushing the pod backward with a loud scrape that startled Bodhi, and paced over to the porthole set in the other bulkhead. She stared through it, leaning her head against the thick transparisteel, and gripped the ledge until her knuckles whitened.

There was one more thing Cassian had to know. He kept his gaze on Bodhi, calm and direct, even though this was possibly the most embarrassing question he’d had to ask since he hit puberty. “So this kind of bond isn’t sexual in nature?” His voice stayed professionally neutral, but Jyn’s face was immediately overcast with so much horror he was sorry he’d asked. He’d thought it would be better to acknowledge the bantha in the room, but maybe he should have found a way to talk to Bodhi alone instead.

Bodhi didn’t seem to notice the angry shame radiating from Jyn. He simply looked at Cassian like he was an idiot. “No? I mean, that wouldn’t make any sense. The Jedi were celibate, so…”

Cassian cleared his throat. “Of course. I just wondered, because touching each other seems to, um, reassure us.” He glanced at Jyn. Right now he wouldn't need any kind of mystic connection to her to know how uncomfortable she was; her tight shoulders and defensive, crossed-arm posture were broadcasting it. 

Cassian should have realized earlier; would have, if his head was clearer. He wanted Jyn, and his own desire (and maybe some of the things that had happened when they were on Scarif) had misled him into thinking she felt the same. Well, he’d just have to shut that away and accept the physical contact without letting her sense his other feelings. If he could.

Even Bodhi seemed to understand it now. “Oh!” He frowned nervously. “Well, maybe that’s because it’s new? You’re still getting used to it? It could settle down with time.”

“Thank you, Bodhi,” Cassian said, trying to keep his voice gentle. None of this was Bodhi’s fault. 

None of it was anyone’s fault, really; apparently it was just the Force’s idea of a cosmically funny fucking joke to tie Cassian irrevocably to someone who’d gnaw her own leg off to get out of a trap. It seemed almost vindictive. Cassian knew he deserved anything the universe could throw at him, but why Jyn? 

Maybe the Force was able to sense that he was a terrible person. Maybe it had seen everything he did and judged him unworthy, even though he hadn’t done it for himself. That had always been Cassian’s deepest fear, that he’d become a killer for good reasons, but not ones that history would understand or that would reap any legacy for others.

He rubbed his hand over his eyes, pressing his thumb into his brow, and sighed. Was this really going to last for the rest of their lives? From Bodhi’s story, it seemed more than plausible. He couldn’t help wondering what would happen when Jyn slept with someone, or fell in love—how exquisitely painful it would be to feel her happiness and know someone else was the cause of it.

Bodhi stood, scrubbing his palms along the sides of his pants anxiously. “If I remember anything else that might help, I’ll tell you, of course, but that’s all I can think of right now. Is that everything you wanted to ask?”

“For now, yes.” Cassian looked over at Jyn for confirmation, and she nodded. 

“Thanks, Bodhi. We’ll let you know if anything else comes to mind.”

She hugged Bodhi before he left, and the way it relaxed her tense shoulders made Cassian almost jealous. He wanted to be the one to make Jyn feel better, since that was one of the few things this bond was good for.

Once Bodhi was gone, Jyn sat down in the chair he’d vacated and sighed in an echo of Cassian’s earlier expression of frustration. 

He might as well ask her something he’d been wondering about for a while. “Are you Force-sensitive? Is that why you asked Bodhi about his great-uncle?”

“No. At least—no.” Jyn threw her head back, staring at the ceiling, and didn’t continue for a long time. But Cassian waited silently, and at last she said, “My mother used to play games with me on Lah’mu. I think some of them were the kind of things they used to teach at the Temple. And sometimes, I’d get a feeling from my kyber crystal...” She lifted her head and looked at him earnestly. “But if there is any power in me, it’s not much. I can’t go around lifting rocks or whatever.” 

He returned to his first question. “So if you can’t read my mind, what can you see?” How can I have any secrets from you, was what he really needed to know. Not just for the Alliance, but for his own self-respect. So that he didn’t have to feel her loathing for him…

“I can tell that you’re angry about this,” Jyn said. “Not that I blame you. And worried. But it’s not a security risk, Cassian, honestly. You can tell Draven I can’t look into your head and see mission plans or anything like that.” She swallowed. “What’s it like for you?”

There was something about the way she said his name, about the way she entered a space, whether she was looking at him or not. The feeling in the air changed; like a dance without music.

Cassian took a moment to choose his words, trying to make it sound as non-threatening as possible. “I don’t always know what you’re feeling, but I know where you are. When I woke up yesterday, I knew you were in the room before I opened my eyes—like knowing where my own hand was.”

Jyn made a noncommittal noise that he wasn’t sure how to interpret. “You’re tired.” She inched her hand over until the tip of her smallest finger brushed his thigh above the bacta tank. Peace flooded through him at the contact. Like wiping the fog away from a condensation-coated window, everything was clearer and brighter; it felt ten times better than when the droid dispensed his medication.

“You are too,” he answered without thinking. Maybe he was just drawing a conclusion based on evidence, or maybe now that she was touching him, some of her own emotional temperature had leached through the bond.

“Get some rest.” Jyn curled up in the chair, rolling herself into a small knot with her knees under her chin. She watched him through half-closed eyes and put one hand on the pod, lying palm up between them. 

Cassian slid his hand over until their knuckles brushed. As soon as he did, another wave of peace rolled over him, even stronger than the exhaustion. He closed his eyes and slept.

Cassian wasn’t fooled by Draven’s apparently distracted mood. He took a seat at the General’s off-handed wave and waited while Draven finished reading whatever was on his datapad. It was a relief to be able to sit upright; the medics had only released him from the bacta traction this morning, and he was still using his leg a little gingerly even though they’d assured him the bone had re-knit as strong as they could make it.

Finally Draven looked up at him, dropped the pad on his desk, and leaned back in his own chair, folding hands over his stomach. “So. You and Erso. What the hell am I supposed to do with the two of you?”

Cassian took care to speak evenly and slowly, as though what had happened to him and Jyn was just another tactical consideration. “This seems like an obvious asset to exploit, sir.”

“Right. One of my strongest Intelligence agents has some kind of inexplicable psychic bond with someone who’s a loose cannon, at best. It could be a huge advantage, or it could mean both of you are completely useless to the Rebellion.”

“What?” Cassian couldn’t help wincing when he sat up straighter; his spine still protested at any sudden movement. “That’s unfair. We’ve both proven ourselves—”

“I’m not talking about your dedication to the cause, Andor. I’m talking about this weird Force banthashit. We just don’t know enough about how it works. How far apart can you get before you can’t function? If one of you gets hurt, are both of you incapacitated? What if one of you is captured? Killed?”

Cassian’s stomach sank, roiling with anxiety, as Draven rapid-fire rattled off all the disturbing questions that had been lurking in the back of his own mind. He’d hoped against hope that somehow the strength of their connection couldn’t be interpreted as a disadvantage. He’d known better.

“Can you talk to each other in your heads?” Draven demanded. 

Cassian blinked. “We’re not Jedi, sir.” 

Draven gave him the unimpressed glare that weak evasion deserved. 

“Not really,” he admitted. “Just vague impressions. Emotional states, mostly. And a rough fix on location.”

“That’s more than enough. We’ve already got a Jedi, apparently.” Draven’s snort sounded dismissive, though Cassian knew he’d been poring over all of Luke Skywalker’s flight recordings and any available Imperial documentation on him. “But he’s about as subtle as a sandcrawler on fire, especially with that flashy lightsaber. People like you and Erso, though… you could blend in. Use those abilities in a less obtrusive way.”

Cassian was able to breathe again. It seemed as though Draven was at least willing to consider working out a solution that would allow him and Jyn to stay with the Rebellion. He resolutely ignored the fact that Jyn hadn’t wanted that, and now she was tied to him like a heavy weight shackled to her feet, holding her down. 

“Let’s try a little test. Is Jyn Erso still on board this ship?” Draven asked in a bored monotone.

“Yes,” Cassian answered, without having to stop and think about it. 

Draven shrugged. “A logical inference based on previous knowledge. Can you tell me her approximate location?”

Cassian closed his eyes and tried to get a fix on the tickling sensation inside his skull, the Jyn-shaped presence he could always feel now. “Not far. Somewhere on this deck, but maybe not on this corridor.”

Draven looked down at his datapad and frowned. “What’s she doing?” 

“I can’t tell,” Cassian lied. Her mind was unusually quiet and calm, not the shifting kaleidoscope he was used to; he was almost positive she was asleep, given the contented warmth coming from her, and he didn’t want to risk waking her by being too intrusive.

He sighed. Infuriating as it was to admit, Draven was right; they desperately needed to know the limits of this thing.

“Well, you were correct. She’s in medical right now, going through another wound cleaning procedure.”

So the floating sensation was probably anesthetic-related; they must have given her some strong painkillers for her to be that fuzzy. 

“That’s promising, but we still need to know more about the limits of this thing. I’m giving you two a ship and a cover mission scouting for a new base.” Draven tossed Cassian a datachip that he fumbled catching, still disoriented by Jyn’s spacey mood. “Don’t get me wrong, if you can actually find a possible location that will be helpful. But your primary assignment is to figure out this Force thing and get it under control, whatever it takes. Think of it as a cross between a scientific experiment and a honeymoon—”

“We’re not sleeping together.” Cassian couldn’t help interrupting even though he knew it was pointless. And indeed, Draven didn’t bother to hide his flat look of skepticism. Cassian clenched his fists and kept talking, digging the hole deeper. “Sex isn’t a prerequisite for this kind of bond. At least according to Rook.”

Draven pursed his lips in interest. “What does he know about it?”

“Not much.” Cassian shrugged. “He’s Jedhan, so he grew up hearing stories about Force bonds, and according to family legend his great-grandfather was bonded to someone. But he’s never seen one in action before either.”

“Still, I’ll have him interviewed. Any additional information we can gather could be useful.” And Draven picked up his datapad again, signalling that Cassian could finally escape.


	2. Chapter 2

The midrange freighter Jyn had been told to report to was old, battered and small. There wasn’t much to it: cargo hold below, two-seater cockpit above, plus two tiny cabins with an equally cramped fresher shoehorned between them and a galley unit that looked like it had caught on fire at least once. But it was well-maintained, and a class of ship Jyn recognized as reliable and easily flown without a co-pilot. And a compact one-person speeder was bolted to a cradle in the cargo hold, so they’d have a less obtrusive method of getting around planetside if necessary. All in all, the _Kitehawk_ was a solid, unremarkable craft. The Alliance (or Cassian?) seemed to have considered everything they might need for this mission.

Except for the sleeping arrangements. She looked at the two berths again. That made her a little uneasy; it meant they couldn't sleep in the same room unless one of them was on the floor, which seemed like it would be both uncomfortable and awkward. Was that Cassian’s way of suggesting that they needed to create more space between them, despite the bond?

Well, no point in worrying about it now. She stowed her bag under the berth in the cabin farther from the cockpit, assuming Cassian would be the primary pilot. She’d take her fair share of watches, of course, but she was only a middling flyer. 

She looked around the bare, dingy space and swallowed. Jyn didn’t have a wide armspan, and she could touch both bulkheads with her arms outstretched. This ship was where she and the companion she’d met a couple of weeks ago, who she was now kriffing _Force-bonded_ to, would spend the next few weeks trying to learn how to make this thing work out. If they could.

Jyn refused to think about all the melodramatic stories her mother had told her of linked Jedi who died tragically, together or apart, if their bond was severed by some catastrophe. She wasn’t a Jedi, for one thing, and neither was Cassian. Those were just fairy tales. They weren’t about to encounter a Sith lord… well, as long as they were lucky enough to stay out of Vader’s way. She thought about what he might do to the Skywalker kid if he caught him, or to anyone who showed a trace of Force sensitivity, and shivered.

That was the part that didn’t make sense to her. Jyn had always believed in the cosmic Force; sometimes reluctantly or with bitterness, but still, she’d always held on to the teachings her mother had passed on. She’d found them comforting, not because she thought the Force would do anything to help her, but as a reminder that nothing lasted forever—good or bad. 

She wasn’t a practitioner, though. She’d never tried to use the Force; she couldn’t even sense it in the way that Chirrut had. At most, if she meditated while holding her mother’s crystal, she sometimes felt a faint sense of connection with the universe. That wasn’t even a hundredth as strong as the connection she now had to Cassian, the solid surety that flooded through her every time they touched. 

If only it gave Cassian as much comfort. But she still remembered the sickening bolt of absolute horror and repulsion she’d felt go through him as soon as he understood what she meant by a Force bond. It was no wonder that such an intensely private person, someone whose life depended on keeping secrets, would hate the prospect of being known by someone else. Especially her.

He was adjusting, of course, because that was how Cassian survived—by coping with things he hated. And he’d gotten better at concealing his instinctive urge to pull back every time she touched him. But she’d never be able to forget how much he loathed the bond between them. 

Thinking about him, as always these days, opened the connection that their Force bond had created. Guiltily, she risked stealing a swift glimpse at his mood. He was annoyed, but she didn’t think it was at her; his mind had the focused, keen edge that meant he was planning something. Then he suddenly brightened, happier in a way she could almost taste, like citrus on her tongue. What was he so pleased about? She quickly tried to disengage before he noticed anything. She still wasn’t sure if he could tell when she was looking at him, mentally.

Jyn knew frustratingly little about the Force. She had no idea how this kind of bond was supposed to work. Did she feel so close to Cassian now because of the bond, or did it happen because she felt drawn to him even before they almost died together? In that darkened elevator, she’d put her arms carefully around him not just because they both needed the support, but for her own sake. She’d wanted to hold him.

She still did. It was a constant undercurrent in her thoughts, wondering what it would feel like to kiss Cassian, to make him come. If just holding his hand was enough to create a deep current of warmth between them, how intense would sex be?

She had to stop thinking about it, because it wasn’t going to happen. Cassian only allowed himself carefully measured contact, just enough to keep them both functioning; he avoided touching her unless he truly needed to, or she asked him. And he’d asked Bodhi about sex while she was there, too, in a way that made it clear which answer he’d been hoping for.

Fortunately, before she could sink too deep into her own brooding thoughts, she sensed Cassian was on his way. A sudden shift in the direction of his attention told her it was focused on her and the ship.

She heard his footsteps ring through the corridor on his way to the cockpit, and caught up to him there. He’d thrown his duffel into one corner and was checking over the controls and displays with a practiced eye. 

“Hope you’re okay with doing most of the flying. I’m not much of a pilot, really,” she admitted. “I can manage a basic landing without turning a ship into a flatcake, but that’s about it.”

“I can teach you, if you want,” Cassian offered. He sat down and began the pre-flight routine, flicking switches in a swift array. “This ship is pretty easy to handle, but it’s always better to have a co-pilot.” 

A flicker of stress contracted his forehead and she wondered if he was thinking about Kay. To change the subject, she asked, “Where are we off to?” 

“Did you bother to read the mission briefing?” he asked dryly.

Jyn shrugged. It had hardly seemed necessary, because she understood the reasoning behind their make-work mission perfectly. It didn’t matter to Draven where the two of them went, he just wanted them out of his (thinning) hair until they fixed this problem for him. 

“There’s a list of worlds they want checked out as potential sites for new bases,” he told her. “The first one isn’t the most promising, but we’ll start there since it’s a short lightspeed haul.”

Jyn snorted. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Mostly climate. It’s dry, cold…” Cassian’s hesitation was barely noticeable, but there. “Something like Jedha.”

Jyn made a noncommittal noise and hoped it sounded bored enough. She dreamed often of Jedha’s destruction somehow combined with what she’d seen of Scarif’s, the oncoming burst of ashes and pyroclastic superheated air rushing before a poisonous green glare. It wouldn’t be pleasant if this new planet brought those memories back.

“What is it?” Cassian’s voice interrupted her train of thought and she realized her fingers were wrapped tight around her mother’s crystal. 

She looked over at him in the pilot’s seat, headgear around his neck. He’d stopped doing the preflight checks and was watching her, his hands poised over the controls. Had he sensed her anxiety? 

Jyn gritted her teeth. The closeness caused by their entanglement was too confusing to deal with. It was like the rapport you could have after years of knowing someone, when you could almost always predict what they were about to do. Which ought to be great—except that since they didn’t have those years of camaraderie behind them, they didn’t know what each other’s reactions meant. 

“Nothing.” She sat in the co-pilot’s chair and buckled her harness. “Let’s go.”

Cassian didn’t start up again. “Jyn,” he said quietly. “If this is going to work, we need to be as honest with each other as possible. If you don’t tell me when something I do is bothering you—” 

“It’s not you,” she snapped. “It’s this whole stupid thing.” With a sigh, she leaned back against the headrest. “I promise, we’ll talk about it once we reach Skoriat.”

“So you did read the briefing.” 

“Skimmed it.”

Jyn could tell Cassian was smiling even though she didn’t turn her head to look at him. The air between them was full of the buzzing nearness that made her want to reach out and touch him, to feel that reassuring solid presence. Instead she set her hands firmly on the armrests of her seat. 

She believed in the Force, but that didn’t mean she believed what it did always made sense. She still had a faint hope of finding someone out there in the galaxy who could tell them how to live with the bond. Maybe someday they’d cross paths with someone who could tell her whether it was permanent. Would it eventually fade on its own? Or was there any way to break it, short of death? None of the stories had mentioned any way to do that… 

A sick whirl of nausea rushed through her at the thought of losing the connection between them, even though she tried to tell herself it would only mean going back to the way things were before—to normality. But part of her was already used to Cassian’s presence in her mind, just as much as his physical presence at her side. 

“I know you’ve been researching Force bonds. So tell me what you’ve learned.” Cassian sounded perfectly calm; she didn’t know if that was because he was trying to make her feel better, or because he honestly didn’t find it bothersome to think about.

“Well, so far all I’ve found are the cheesiest kind of holodramas, so who knows if it has any relevance.” She blew out a frustrated puff of air, lifting her bangs. “But a lot of it seems to match what we’ve already experienced—people who were bonded by the Force could sense each other’s feelings, thoughts, location. The stronger the bond was, the more they could communicate and over longer distances.”

“Does that mean our bond isn’t a strong one?” Cassian asked carefully.

“I guess that would make sense.” Jyn shrugged. The link between them felt strong to her, but what did she have to compare it to? If it were, they ought to be able to be more than a few kilometres away from each other without agony. 

She didn’t want to end up thinking about the rest of her life tied to Cassian, so she kept talking. “Not surprisingly, most of the stories emphasize the combat applications of a Force bond. It was supposed to make Jedi stronger, being able to draw on each other’s energy. But it must have been pretty rare, because outside of fiction there’re hardly any references to it. Of course, the Empire also tried to wipe out any knowledge of the Force, so...” She shrugged again. 

“So no-one really knows,” he completed her thought. “We’ll have to try some experiments to figure out what we can do.”

“Why not just borrow Skywalker’s lightsaber and have at it,” she groused.

He glanced sideways and flashed her a lightning-fast smile, so quick she almost missed it. “Much as I’d enjoy seeing you with it, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

She held on to that flicker of a smile in her memory and told herself it was a good sign.

Skoriat was a small, dusty moon, but pretty, especially with the shining rings of the planet it orbited arching across the dimming sky above. Cassian tucked the ship against the side of a crater layered in sediment like pastel rainbows and they sat on the open ramp, feet dangling off the side, to eat dinner.

Cassian looked around the empty landscape and nodded to himself. “Distance.” 

Jyn chewed her rather rubbery helping of reconstituted dehydrated starch with other stuff she couldn’t identify mixed in, and hastily swallowed. “What?” But even as she said it, she understood what he meant—an experiment to test their bond.

“That’s what we should try first.” Cassian scraped the leftovers from his plate into the sand by the ramp, where beetles and the little desert jerboa would come and eat it in the night. “See how far apart we can get and still sense each other.” 

Or before it was too painful to continue. It was optimistic of him to frame it the way he had.

She passed him one of the ripe jogan fruit she’d snagged from stores. Cassian had suggested saving it for later, but she’d pointed out that since they had no real idea where they were going or where they might resupply, they ought to enjoy the fresh stuff while they could. “How far do you think?”

Cassian took a bite of fruit and tipped his head back, looking at the faint rings bisecting the sky. “No idea. I’ll start off with a few klicks and then keep moving farther away at regular intervals.”

“No,” Jyn snapped with a glare at him. “I’ll be the one moving.” 

“Why?” Cassian frowned at her. 

Because she wouldn’t go too far, if it started to hurt, and she knew Cassian would. He’d try to push past it and might end up passing out, with her unable to find him… a thin trickle of fear made her shiver, and she hitched her scarf up around her neck to pass it off on the chilly desert evening.

“Because you’re still recovering,” she said. And that was true enough; his injuries from Scarif had been worse than hers. “If we’re going to split up, better for you to stay here and rest. I don't have to be a great pilot to hop around the planet.” She covered her mouth with one hand as a huge yawn fought its way through. “But first, sleep.”

“Sleep?” Cassian repeated as though he had no idea what she was talking about, though the circles under his eyes were huge and darker than his hair. 

“Yes,” Jyn said firmly. “It’s going to be dark soon anyway. And if we want to start testing how this thing works, we should be well-rested.” She stood up and reached out for Cassian’s hand, but managed to turn the motion into a gentle tap on his shoulder instead. “Come on, Captain.”

He got to his feet, holding his back stiffly immobile. She took his plate out of his hand, dropped it in the galley’s sonic scrubber, and prodded him toward his cabin. Shavit, she hadn’t thought this through… did he think she meant they ought to sleep in the same space again? Should they?

Jyn really didn’t want to sleep on her own… but the whole point of this mission (or one of them) was learning how to be independent, right? They couldn’t stay at each other’s side for the rest of their lives. And there truly wasn’t enough room to share one of the small cabins. After all, this wasn’t a huge ship like _Home One_. Cassian would only be a few metres away.

So she muttered good night and slipped past him to her own cabin, avoiding his gaze. 

But knowing Cassian was less than three metres away apparently wasn’t enough to satisfy their bond. Jyn woke early the next morning, still exhausted, with a headache hovering behind her eyes. It was worse than it had been since the first time she felt Cassian’s pain in the medbay, though it was a grinding ache instead of a sharp and piercing agony. 

She stumbled out of her berth to find Cassian already standing in the galley brewing strong caf. He looked as drained and irritated as she felt. 

Jyn knew she was pushing it, but the starving emptiness inside her had to be replenished. She walked up to Cassian and leaned against his arm. Every muscle in her body loosened and unknotted, tension dissipating like a fog lifting from her brain. He sighed and his body slowly relaxed, listing toward hers. Jyn tipped her head to rest on his shoulder and closed her eyes, listening to the hot water bubble as they waited in silence for the caf to brew. 

As soon as it was ready, Cassian filled two tin mugs to the brim and they took them out to sit on the ship’s ramp and watch the sunrise. Jyn was careful to sit down first and give Cassian a chance to decide whether he needed more contact or had his fill; the worst of her headache had abated, and she didn’t want to crowd him. But he must have had a bad night too, since he sat down close enough for the side of his thigh to press against hers. The relief of that small touch was enough to keep the muscles in the back of Jyn’s neck from tightening again.

The caf was barely cool enough to drink, but she took a long gulp and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I think that proved the point,” she muttered. “Please tell me we don’t have to do it again tonight.”

Cassian sighed. “We really ought to try spending more than one night not in the same room… but maybe later.” He cleared his throat. “Those berths aren’t designed for two humans. We’ll have to put down bedrolls in the cargo hold, which won’t be comfortable.”

“I’ll take it,” Jyn said grumpily. “Anything’s better than feeling like I’ve been run over by a herd of banthas.” She slurped another mouthful of caf, feeling her brain slowly revive.

When did she become so utterly comfortable around Cassian that she didn’t even bother to trying to keep her guard up around him? It had started before Scarif, maybe—she remembered how strangely easy it was to fall into sync with him on Jedha—but by the time they were on their way there, he was the first person she’d trusted at her back, or in her blind spot, since she left the Partisans.

Did the bond happen because she felt like that? Or would she have wound up connected in the same way to Bodhi, or Tonc, or anyone else she ended up with on that beach?

“So, professor, let’s perform our first experiment.” She waved her mug at the horizon. “Want to make a bet on how far I get before I crash?”

His shoulders moved against hers as he laughed almost soundlessly, and Jyn grinned to herself. She didn’t know when it had become so important to her to amuse Cassian, but every time she got him to crack a smile was a victory she savoured now.

“Take the speeder,” he suggested. “Since you’re such a lousy pilot.”

She elbowed him in mock offence, but it was actually a good idea. Less likely for her to get into trouble that way, if there was a problem—she’d be closer to the ground, for one thing.

Jyn wasn’t sure what to expect from this test. She remembered being in the medbay and how much it had hurt just to leave the same room Cassian was in. But then, once their physical injuries were healing, they’d been able to spend time apart on _Home One_ without an issue—though they’d never spent more than a few hours away from each other. And surely, the bond had had enough time to settle by now? None of the (completely fictional, she reminded herself) accounts she’d found made it sound as though bondmates were constantly glued to each other’s side, unable to separate at all. 

And her departure went smoothly enough, as did the first small arc she took the speeder in, following the rim of the crater until she was directly across from their ship. She stopped there, about 500 metres away, to tighten the loose strap of her goggles and take stock. No signs of pain, weakness, or changes in her vision yet. 

“Everything okay so far?” Cassian’s voice crackled over the comm.

“Yes.” Jyn rolled her eyes even though he couldn’t see her. “Which you know as well as I do. I’m going a little farther now.”

There were no clear landmarks on the horizon to aim for, just more pockmarked craters and rings. She chose a direction at random and flew off to the south-west. 

The first ten klicks or so were easy; Cassian’s presence faded a little, but the illusion of privacy was kind of pleasant. She was just beginning to feel more confident and relax into the speeder seat when she noticed the first scratch of pain at the base of her neck. She looked down at the readout to make a note of the distance and kept flying. At first, it could have been nothing more than a tension headache brought on by the glare of the sun on the pale surface. She’d powered her way through much worse.

But it intensified, slowly and steadily. Each metre Jyn travelled tightened the vice around her skull and sent flames licking up her spine. For a while she could breathe through it, focusing on the dusty ochre ground racing past ahead of the nose of her speeder—but at the point her vision started to blur and white spots danced in front of her eyes, she slammed on the brakes and quit. She couldn’t risk pushing it farther and passing out. She made another note of the distance travelled and turned around.

The trip back took much longer, as desperate as she was to hurry, because the little speeder didn’t have an autopilot function. Jyn couldn’t just close her eyes and concentrate on breathing and staying upright. She had to fly slow and low to the ground, gritting her teeth against the rattling in her bones and ignoring the band of tension around her head. She waited for the pain to subside as she got closer to the ship, but it didn’t; it felt as though something inside her had snapped and couldn’t heal. 

No matter how dangerous it might be, she sped up once she saw the _Kitehawk_ in the distance. She needed Cassian. Her world narrowed to her hands tight on the speeder handles, the bright sky beating down on her head, the pain radiating through her body. She skidded to a stop a few metres from the ship, sending grit flying, and dropped the speeder carelessly. Her whole body hurt, her lungs couldn’t pull in enough oxygen as they heaved in and out.

Cassian hurried toward her along the rim of the crater, a fuzzy outline in her blurred vision. He wasn’t running, exactly, but he was moving very quickly. His limp showed, like it did occasionally when he was tired, and his posture was stiff and tightly-wound. 

She stumbled in his direction, driven by the desperate need to get to him as fast as she could, each pebble like a massive boulder and her head pounding with each footfall. Her harsh breath echoed in her ears.

They crashed into each other, dropping to their knees bruisingly hard, and her headache evaporated, leaving behind only a slight ringing in her ears. Cassian’s arms locked tight around her as she buried her head in his chest without stopping to take her goggles off. There was a suspicious amount of moisture in her eyes and she didn’t want to expose them. 

Cassian didn’t seem to care. He held onto her so tight that Jyn could barely hold back more tears at the overwhelming sense of belonging and comfort. 

“Come on,” he finally said quietly, getting to his feet with only a small hitch in the movement. Jyn knew perfectly well that his healing fracture was hurting him, though; the ache was in her own leg too. She shoved her goggles up on her head, swiping surreptitiously at her eyes, and slipped one arm around his waist pretending it was only for the support she could give him. 

Together they shuffled back to the ship and into her cabin, because it was the closest, but once inside the tiny space Jyn hesitated. Holding hands wouldn’t be enough right now; her body was crying out for more touch to settle her into her own skin again. 

She sat down on the berth with her back against the cold bulkhead. She didn’t have to pull Cassian down with her; he followed, sitting beside her as they had this morning, but closer—no pretence of casual closeness this time. The firm, solid line of contact along their whole bodies was almost enough to satisfy the black hole of want inside her. Almost.

But the more Jyn touched him, the more she wanted to touch him—and the more she wanted to be touched.

Daring, she wormed her arm between his back and the cold metal until it was wrapped around him. She dropped her head sideways and leaned on his shoulder but held herself a little stiffly, not relaxing her weight fully, waiting for him to shrug her off or pull away.

He shifted beside her and sat up a little straighter, and she almost whimpered with disappointment. But he gently tugged the goggles off her head, careful not to pull her hair caught in the strap, and set them aside before leaning back against the wall. Again, like this morning, she could feel his muscles sag and the tension drop out of him. 

His head tipped over to rest on hers, and without the annoying goggles in her way now she could nestle into his shoulder, turning her nose into his shirt and breathing him in. His hand, which was resting on his own thigh, slipped down—just enough so that his knuckles brushed her leg. He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head and her arm tightened around his waist.

This was like the nights in the medbay when she’d sit beside his bed, timing her breathing with his and feeling like she was carrying part of his pain. Jyn could hear and feel Cassian’s muffled heartbeat, moving through his body into hers. She sighed and stayed perfectly still, unmoving except for the rise and fall of her lungs, despite the urge to kiss his throat and make his pulse pick up. Although she’d never done it, she knew just where to place a kiss that would make him shiver, draw a deep noise of want out of him. Did he know the same for her? She forced her thoughts away from how much she wanted to find out.

Their breathing slowed and settled into a matching rhythm that made Jyn remember the sea breaking on the black sand of Lah’mu, rolling and foaming up to her toes. She closed her eyes and listened to the Force flow between them.

They spent the rest of the day not doing much, by unspoken agreement. Neither of them wanted to be out of eyesight of each other. After dinner, Jyn settled on the short bench across from the galley, made herself another cup of caf, and started skimming through yet another breathless tale of Jedi adventures. Cassian gathered their blasters and a cleaning kit and sat across from her. The small table was folded out between them, but he was just close enough to satisfy the need for proximity. Surreptitiously she stretched her legs out a tiny bit farther so that the tips of her boots touched his.

He laid out a square of oilcloth and disassembled the blasters quickly and with the deceptive ease of decades of practice. “More research?” he asked, nodding at her datapad.

“More bantha shit, basically.” Jyn sighed. “I think people just made up anything they wanted for these stories. The Jedi in them seem to be able to use the Force to do anything short of flying. None of which is any use to us.”

“Have you been able to sense anyone else? Or just me?” Cassian set the blaster pieces out on the cloth, aligned in precise order. 

“I haven’t tried.” Jyn frowned. “Why would I be able to, though? It’s not like I almost died with anyone else. Even with Bodhi, I didn't feel that kind of connection when he was hurt.”

Cassian’s hands continued moving, sure and quick. He was concentrating very hard on what he was doing, and Jyn wondered if it was a way to keep her out of his thoughts; surely he didn’t need to pay that much attention to something he’d done thousands of times before. “I think it’s pretty clear that if either of us has any Force sensitivity, it’s you. It seems like your mother might even have been trying to train you, from some of the things you remember.”

Jyn set her cup down on the table, obscurely upset by the thought of this bond being due to her. She didn’t want to be responsible for it.

Why? Because then she’d have to try and do something about it? To break it, if that’s what Cassian wanted? 

She didn’t even want to think about that, and her guilty evasion told her that was exactly the problem. She didn’t want to consider the possibility that this connection could be erased, because she wanted it. A sad insight into her selfishness: she’d rather preserve the thing she knew Cassian hated, because it forced him to stay close to her. It meant he couldn’t leave her. 

Jyn swallowed and got up from her seat, roughly jumbling the dishes into the sonic scrubber. 

“I’m sorry, Jyn.” Cassian laid the reassembled blaster back down on the table. He watched her warily, and she knew that he saw more of her than most people—though she had no idea exactly what he saw, or thought he saw, right now. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

She took the out gratefully, instead of telling him he was on the wrong track. She leaned against the galley counter. One hand absently reached for the kyber crystal hanging from her neck in a gesture she’d tried to suppress all her life.

“I don’t have that many memories of what my mother believed,” she admitted. “I wish I did. Mostly I remember my father teasing her about being a hard-headed geologist who worshiped the Force. He seemed to think that was funny. On the other hand, he was the one who ended up hunting for kyber, so…” She shrugged. 

The chime to indicate the dishes were clean was a welcome interruption. But once she’d put them away, there was nothing else to distract her from the fact that night was drawing down outside, and ship time was also counting down toward the hour they’d usually turn in. 

Without looking at Cassian, she took the few steps down the corridor to her cabin, tugged the thin bedding off her bunk and dragged it behind her to the cargo hold. She stood there, mentally calculating the best place for a makeshift bed. 

Behind her, Cassian grunted, and she turned to find him dragging his own bedding toward her. He was moving stiffly, his back clearly paining him. She hastened to grab it from him and swatted his hands away when he tried to help her arrange both the mattress pads to one side of the hold. 

“It’s not heavy,” he argued. 

Jyn ignored him as she threw blankets and pillows down in haphazard layers. 

Once she was finished, Cassian levered himself carefully down onto the makeshift bed, sitting at the side of it to undo his boots and set them against the bulkhead. She leaned against the bulkhead and pulled her boots off with one hand, tossing them into the other corner. She wasn’t about to take anything else off. It got cold on Skoriat, after all.

Cassian was still sitting on the edge of the bed, frowning at a hole in his socks through which one of his toes showed. “Do you care which side?” he asked.

Jyn shook her head. That was why she hadn’t set the nest up in a corner; this way, both of them could have space on one side and wouldn’t be next to the wall. She didn’t like sleeping that way unless she was alone… usually. She didn’t think it would bother her to have Cassian between her and the way out, though. 

Jyn woke to the pale grainy light of dawn through the transparisteel viewscreen of the cockpit, even though not much of it filtered down here to the cargo hold. Physically, there wasn’t much improvement in her situation: her healing shoulder was still sore, and the thin bedroll beneath her didn’t do much to keep the chill of the metal floor away. But Cassian’s presence beside her all night long had been enough to eliminate all the phantom pain she was feeling yesterday. Enfolded in a warm bubble of peace, she’d slept better than she had in years.

His back was warm and solid against hers. She wished she could turn over and curl around that warmth, wrap an arm around him and pull him closer. Maybe he’d turn over and let her head rest on his chest, stroke her hair… 

Jyn firmly squashed that useless desire down, before there was any chance Cassian might catch a glimpse of it. She didn’t need to look at him to know that he was already awake. 

“What’s up?” she asked, her voice gravelly with sleep. When she turned her head, she found Cassian’s eyes already open. They flicked away from her and focused on the bulkhead above. 

“Nothing,” he said, his voice hushed to match the early morning quiet. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.” His neck flushed a dull red beneath his beard and he rolled away, quickly sitting up. 

Hastily Jyn got up too and started gathering up the bedding, shoving it into a pile in the corner to keep it out of the way. “Breakfast,” she said firmly. “And then we can check something else off the list. I know there’s no way you and Draven didn’t put a long one together.”

He didn’t deny it, which was as good as an admission. “What about you?” Cassian asked. “Isn’t there something you want to know about how this works?”

Jyn craned her neck to peer up through the cockpit at the brighter line of the horizon, turning a pale lavender where the sun was about to rise. Yeah, she wanted to know if this was going to haunt her for the rest of her life—this feeling of everything she wanted, just out of reach: somewhere to belong, a person she belonged with, someone who’d stay with her— 

“Too much.” Her voice sounded too melancholy in her own ears, so she tried to come up with something quickly. “Uh, if you want a laugh, I skimmed through a bunch more Old Republic serial dramas about Force-bonds.” (She wasn’t going to mention the fact that every single bonded pair—or trio in one case—had also been fucking like rabbits. That was fiction for you.) “They were mostly codswallop, but one of them claimed Force bonds could give you the ability to share skills or abilities with each other without having to be taught.”

Cassian made a skeptical noise. “How? You mean I might suddenly be able to deck people with a baton?”

“And I could be an expert pilot,” she said brightly. “Only one way to find out.”

“I’d rather keep the ship in one piece for now.” Cassian dodged her swift jab and grinned at her. “You could try some long-range target shooting, though.”

So they spent the rest of the morning set up on the rim of the crater, with Jyn firing at a random pattern of flashing targets projected by Cassian. He didn’t coach her in any way, at least verbally; after much debate, they’d decided that he should just stay close and observe her, mentally going through the steps he’d take in order to make the same shots. 

Jyn settled into the dusty ground, bracing her elbows and making sure the tripod of Cassian’s blaster rifle was securely balanced. She looked over her shoulder at Cassian, sitting a few feet away, his legs dangling over the crater’s edge. She hadn’t consciously tried to reach out and touch his thoughts since they left _Home One_ , but this might require her to do that. With a deep sense of reluctance at the idea, she couldn’t help but ask Cassian for reassurance. “Is this okay?”

“What?” He looked over at her, raising an eyebrow, and Jyn was distracted for a moment by how unfairly good he looked in the morning sunshine. He was still weary and thin, pared down to the bone by pain, fatigue and recovery. But those bones were haughty and beautiful. 

“For this to work, I think I’ll have to listen in to you,” she said. “I’ll be careful, though.”

“It’s fine, Jyn.” He looked back down into the distance of the crater, scanning for the markers. “The blue target to the northeast ought to be a manageable shot in these conditions. Let’s see if you can make it.”

Jyn closed her eyes and breathed for a moment, letting her awareness expand to take in the presence of Cassian beside her. It was easier than shutting him out, honestly—like relaxing a clenched fist. She knew right away which target he was talking about, could feel his confident, practiced assessment of how to align the blaster to allow for the current wind speed and direction. It felt as though she could make the shot with her eyes closed if she let herself sink deeper into his senses... but that wasn’t a good idea. 

She opened her eyes, already looking in the direction of the right target. She waited for it to flash once more and checked her aim against the sense of Cassian’s perception in the back of her head, like his hand on her arm adjusting it. Breathed in, let it halfway out, and gently pressed the trigger back. 

The sizzling needle of laser fire just missed—but that was still closer than she’d ever managed to before. Jyn wasn’t much of a shot from any distance over twenty metres, never had been even back when Saw was drilling her every other day. 

“Hah!” She looked over her shoulder at Cassian. “Did you see that?”

“Not bad,” he allowed. “A little more practice and you’ll be halfway decent.”

She glared at him before she picked up on the amusement in his aura. He was teasing her—not something she’d ever have suspected Cassian of—and she decided to play along. “Alright, Captain, put your credits where your mouth is.” She rolled up to her knees and held the rifle out to him. “Let’s see you do it.”

“I thought we were supposed to be testing whether this affected your skill, not mine.” But he took the blaster, ran his hand over the barrel in a thoughtless, automatic gesture, and checked the scope anyway. 

Jyn shrugged. “Maybe I’ll learn something by watching.”

Cassian set the rifle down beside himself, got down on one knee and then wormed into a horizontal position. Every movement was quietly competent, with the functional grace of expertise, even if he was a little stiff. Jyn watched the line of his shoulders and neck as he lowered his head to the sight. From this angle she could see the shaggy ends of his hair caught under his collar, and wondered if it was long enough now to wind her fingers in and pull his head down to her level for a kiss...

“Pay attention,” Cassian said mildly, without looking at her. Jyn flushed and bit her lip, hoping he couldn’t read any of the details of her distraction. 

Cassian made his shot—easily—but after that, the rest of the practice session was a waste of time. After just missing for the tenth time in a row, Jyn threw up her hands and rolled over on to her back, snapping the safety on the rifle and shoving it away from her. 

“I give up,” she grumbled, dropping one arm over her eyes to shield them from the sun, now casting a diffuse but bright pastel light over the crater. “It’s lunch time anyway.” 

She sprang up to make the dusty trek back to the ship. She didn’t look back to see whether Cassian was following her—she didn’t have to; she was burningly conscious of him only a few paces behind.

It only took one more day to finish eliminating Skoriat from consideration as a possible base.

“I can’t think of any reason to keep looking,” Cassian said that night, his voice quiet but rumbling through his chest and into her body. “Scans aren’t showing any usable cave systems.”

Jyn nodded, her chin bumping against his arm. “Yeah. It’s livable but there’s no infrastructure, they’d have to build everything. And the comms distortion from the rings would be a problem. Definitely not the number one choice.”

Cassian sighed. “It was always a long shot.”

“Where to next?” Jyn asked. 

“There are a few options.” Cassian named a couple of systems, neither of which Jyn had ever heard of before. “We can figure it out in the morning.”

Jyn took that as a signal to stop talking and try to go to sleep. And she did try. But she knew Cassian was awake, and that he was anxious or worried about something. 

Jyn didn’t want to invade his privacy and, even if she wanted to, didn’t know how to sift more information from his thoughts. She should just ignore his mood. But the more she tried, the more it lodged in her own head, a source of tension in her muscles and the back of her eyes. She rolled over, putting her back to Cassian, hoping forlornly that it would go away.

That didn’t work, of course. Even though he was lying quiet and seemingly relaxed beside her, his breathing slow and even, she could tell he wasn’t asleep and that he was much more tense than he seemed. She gave it another few minutes, but there was no way she was going to sleep with him vibrating beside her.

She rolled back toward him and tapped his arm with a finger. “What’s up?” she whispered, though she didn’t know why she was bothering to keep her voice quiet, other than that something about the darkness and the silence surrounding them seemed to demand it.

He didn’t pretend that she’d startled him. His eyes opened and found her unerringly, and she remembered him saying that he could always tell where she was now. “You can’t tell?” 

His tone was a little sarcastic, and she bristled. “I’m not going to pry.” Then she scoffed at herself, because that was exactly what she was doing, and put a hand over her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

He sighed again, almost silently, a long slow breath out. “Do you think this is sustainable?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Jyn asked. Surely the Alliance wouldn’t be stupid enough to separate them. Or to kick someone as dedicated as Cassian out. “They can accommodate us, if they need to.”

“That’s not what I meant.” His voice was oddly tight and restrained, even for Cassian. “We have to be able to stand each other, not just sleep in the same room. There’s a reason I normally work alone, I’m not used to long-term assignments.”

It felt like a stab wound under Jyn’s ribs, and her breath stopped for a second. She closed her eyes and concentrated on compressing all of the hurt tight inside her like a closed fist. She knew that Cassian felt miserable too, but the fact he didn’t want to hurt her with his honesty didn’t change the facts. She swallowed and strained to keep her whispered answer level and unaffected. “I don’t have a problem with the current arrangement. Working with you isn’t a hardship, even with these limitations.”

“What if it becomes one?” His voice was a little harder, more brittle. 

“Then you’ll have to tell me,” she said, her voice thick with leashed hurt.

“I‘m sorry, Jyn.” Anger burned through his careful tone. “But I’m not a believer, I never thought about the Force or how to use it, and frankly, I don’t trust it. At least you knew this was a possibility, no matter how rare. I’d never heard of anything like this before, never even considered it.”

And he couldn’t trust her. She’d hoped that he did; she thought they’d earned a measure of each other’s trust with all they’d been through together. But maybe it was less meaningful to him than she thought.

“Fine.” She rolled over again and lay staring into the darkness. The worst part was that as angry as she was, she still didn’t want to go away. She still wanted Cassian beside her. If he wanted her to go, he’d have to tell her to leave.

Jyn could handle this. She could handle whatever she had to, she always did: losing her parents, losing Saw, being alone. But right now her bones felt hollow, her lungs too tight. She felt fragile, and she hated it. She wished fiercely that this stupid bond had never happened.


	3. Chapter 3

They’d finally settled on Goluud Minor as their next destination, after a prolonged discussion about hyperspace lanes and how best to avoid Imperial patrols without looking like they were trying to. There were a few crates of rare ores in the hold to bolster their cover story of being shippers contracted to deliver raw material, and they had manifests for various destinations they could plausibly be headed to. 

Goluud would take longer to evaluate than the barren little moon of Skariot. It had once been a source of corvanium and though most of the mines were long abandoned, plenty of potentially useful underground tunnels and structures remained. They wouldn’t need to check each one out, but some of the larger ones were worth exploring. 

Meanwhile, they’d continued to sleep in the same makeshift bed in the cargo hold, without talking about it. It simply made sense; they weren’t at their full capacity unless they spent time each day in contact, and while they were asleep was the most efficient time. 

Things were okay, mostly. Cassian had ignored the urge to hold Jyn, to kiss her until neither of them could breathe, until it faded and guttered out gradually like a dying comm signal. The buzzing in his skull had subsided to a bearable level, and so had the headaches. It took at least two hours without seeing or touching her before he started to feel any sort of discomfort at her absence. They could be up to fifty kilometres apart without pain. He could deal with that.

Cassian had begun to think, cautiously, that maybe the bond had reached an equilibrium. It still felt like a weakness he shouldn’t acknowledge—he didn’t want to need Jyn. To need her closeness in particular. But he did. And if they could keep the bond satisfied with regular physical contact, especially while they were sleeping, that could work. Everyone would assume they were a couple, as Draven had, but that wasn’t his concern; people could think whatever they wanted. It would work, at least until Jyn decided she wanted something or someone else. 

There was still a constant ache at the back of his neck, a tension that refused to lessen. And the silence between them wasn’t comfortable, as it used to be. Cassian wasn’t sure if that was because Jyn was annoyed with him, or if she was reverting to a level of taciturnity that was normal for her. In return, he tried to ensure that he didn’t think about her or let his thoughts follow her. 

She looked at him coolly now, a blank expression strange on her usually mobile and expressive face—at least, he’d never had trouble reading her before. He felt obscurely irritated with her. Wasn’t it enough that they had to live in each other’s pockets now? Did they have to get along too?

The worst part of each day was the morning, when they woke next to each other—often warmly, intimately, intertwined. Cassian would lie there, inhaling Jyn’s scent, wishing he could pull her closer and press kisses up her throat, over her chin, to her lips... He’d smother those insistent thoughts, but he didn’t get up. He’d wait for the moment when he could tell she woke up, because the sleepy, comfortable atmosphere in the cargo hold turned cold and tense.

And then they’d get up, and get through the rest of their day while trying to ignore each other. 

Later, Cassian wondered if trying so hard to suppress the bond was what stopped him from sensing that Jyn was in danger before it was too late.

Surely he should have had some warning? Or had she been as surprised as he was? Something in him twisted painfully at the thought of her going into danger—exploring a crumbling tunnel without a spotter, her feet slipping, maybe scrabbling for purchase with one hand—all while he was working hard to shut out any possible hint of what she felt. Did she try to call out to him through their connection? Had she been hurt believing that he was ignoring her? 

He was, to be fair, but he’d never have done it if he’d known what was about to happen.

The first inkling of anything wrong was the sudden, blinding spike of pain through his head. Cassian fell to his knees, wrenching his still-healing leg, and stayed down because the next thing he felt was a rush of adrenaline that had nowhere to go—all the blood-rushing, pulse-thumping, dry-throat effects of panic hit him without any physical release. His fingers cramped with painful tightness and his arm felt as though it had been yanked out of his socket.

Cassian knew that something had happened to Jyn. He felt nauseous and dizzy, his heart pounding, as he fumbled for his comm and smashed the button. “Jyn? Jyn!” 

No reply but buzzing static. 

Jyn, he thought helplessly—and got a glimpse of her pale face contorted with effort, her mouth twisted into a desperate snarl. His hands tensed in an echo of hers as she clawed at a rotting cord, and he clenched his fists as though he could help her hold on from so far away, but it snapped—and just like that the connection between them cut off with a stinging whiplash. She was gone.

“Jyn!” he screamed, both aloud and in his head, but there was no response.

Cassian had never experienced the sense of someone else’s pain in his own body before. If this was how it felt for Jyn after Scarif, when he was injured, Cassian didn’t know how she’d managed to talk. Or walk. Or do anything, really.

He was aware, on some level, that the pain wasn’t his—that his ribs weren’t the ones bruised (cracked?), that any headache he had was due to something other than a head injury. He could focus his eyes and take a deep breath, though he didn’t want to. 

Then the pain ceased: it faded away and Cassian desperately wanted it to return. If it was gone, then Jyn wasn’t feeling it anymore, which meant she was unconscious or— 

No. He’d know if she were dead. The part of him which had been occupied by Jyn and her warm, living, irritating presence was still full. He’d tried to ignore her and wall it away, but now he wished he’d let her in. Having her see all of him would be a small price to pay for knowing how to help her. 

Cassian closed his eyes in an effort to calm down. He’d never been a spiritual person, he wasn’t interested in prayer or meditation and he didn’t understand the Force. But he knew he didn’t have any hope of finding Jyn unless he could clear his thoughts, and now might be his best chance, with her mind gone quiet and her physical pain not knotting and tangling the link between them. 

One slow breath, and another. Cassian called to mind everything he knew about Jyn: the stubborn set to her shoulders when she argued with him; the way pieces of her hair fell into her eyes as she concentrated on cleaning her vibroblade; the pattern of her breath against his neck as she slept. With that last remembered sensation, an image flashed into his head—Jyn curled into a ball on her side, trying to protect herself even in unconsciousness. He tasted the metallic tang of blood and sensed the chill of the air around her, slipping through his clothes until he shivered even in the stuffy recirculated air of the ship. 

_Where?_ Where was she? She seemed so close, he could almost reach out his hand and touch her— 

The connection broke. Cassian cursed in a language he thought he’d forgotten, smashing his fist into the bulkhead. His head sagged down against it and he squeezed his eyes shut tighter. Weeping like a child wouldn’t help Jyn.

His right hand was stretched out, pressed flat against the metal and when Cassian straightened up, it tingled, as though it had fallen asleep. He shook it out, but something about it still felt off. Why was it in that strange position in the first place?

That was the hand he’d unthinkingly reached out toward his vision of Jyn. Slowly, thoughtfully, he moved it to point in a different direction. But something about that felt wrong. When he returned to his original position, there was a draw there, a feeling of rightness.

Could it be that simple? Cassian marked the heading that seemed to attract his attention with a quick scratch on the metal. Then he closed his eyes again and turned in a slow circle, thinking about his last glimpse of Jyn, unconscious but still breathing. Still alive. 

There: a gentle but insistent pressure, like someone taking his chin in their hand and guiding him to face one particular direction. When he opened his eyes he was staring directly at the small mark he’d made on the ship. 

Wherever Jyn was, it was somewhere in that direction. He didn’t know how he could be so certain, but he was; it was like the experiment Draven had him do on board _Home One_. As long as he didn’t spend too much time thinking about it, worrying about how it worked, he could do it. 

A vague idea of where to look was a thousand times better than nothing. It would still take a lot of luck to find her, though, and careful searching. While he raced through the pre-flight checklist, his brain whirred with questions and theories. How was he supposed to fly while he followed the faint, intermittent trace of Jyn’s presence, especially since it seemed to work best when he closed his eyes? In the end he used the autonav to set a course roughly on the heading that drew him. He’d let the ship fly itself, as much as possible, while he sat in the cockpit and tried to focus on any small clues.

She couldn’t have gone far, that was his one advantage. The little speeder didn’t have a long range; even if it did, and even if she was angry with him, Jyn wasn’t foolish enough to go beyond their fifty-kilometre radius. And he knew where to find her, in a general sense: somewhere around caves, canyons, abandoned structures, anything that had promise for a Rebel base. 

In that split-second glimpse of her, when she was (falling) hanging on for dear life, he remembered an impression of darkness surrounding her, stone walls closing in. Not an open canyon, then, but a cave or mineshaft. 

With that memory, his sense of her strengthened a little. He took a deep breath and leaned forward, as though he could will the ship to get there ( _where_?) faster. 

A small tangle of collapsed girders and pockmarked earth alerted him to a possible location. The ship skimmed past a tumble-down, half-buried structure—it might once have been a hoistroom or some kind of equipment shed—that drew Cassian’s eye. He took manual control and circled back, lower still, trying to pay attention to the tug on his brain while also scanning the ground visually for anything unusual. 

He couldn’t keep flying forever, but if he guessed wrong and Jyn wasn’t here—there might not be time, _she_ might not have time, for another search. He breathed deep and tried to reach out for Jyn again. This time the tugging sensation under his breastbone was stronger, like a rope tied around him pulling him forward. Did that mean he was getting closer? Or was it just vain hope, fooling him into believing he had a chance of reaching her in time?

He shut his eyes and sent out a thought that could almost be a prayer, begging the Force to let him find her.

And maybe for once the Force listened, because a glint of light caught his eye that turned into the speeder, almost completely concealed where it had been dragged under a fallen beam. 

Jyn’s skin was clammy to the touch, and her eyes were closed. Cassian tapped her cheek with two fingers, whispering her name harshly. 

She blinked, slowly, and her mouth silently formed the syllables of his name. Then she was struggling to rise, pushing herself up from the rocky ground of the tunnel before he could tell her to lie still, throwing her arms around him and clinging to him like a life preserver. Her whole body shook with cold and fear and he held on to her in return, murmuring soothing platitudes into her hair.

He didn’t know who or what to thank for the fact that she’d managed to catch herself just at the lip of a suddenly collapsed shaft. The freezing air emanating from the deep darkness below flowed over Cassian and sent tremors over his skin. They had to get out of here before she went into deeper shock, and he needed to find out how badly she was hurt.

“Can you walk?”

She nodded with grim determination. He grabbed her hands and helped her up.

Jyn was tough, but it still took more than twenty minutes to travel the few hundred meters up the tunnel. As slow as their progress was, it wasn’t difficult, or wouldn’t have been but for Jyn’s weight draped over his side. Was this what it had been like for her, pulling him across the sand on Scarif while he could barely stay upright?

Her hands were cold but the blood seeping through a cut on her arm was warm and sticky on his back. Her pain was still a constant drumbeat in his head, though it was much better now that he was with her. He could feel her relief, her utter trust in him—it was terrifying having someone so independent and self-reliant leaning on him. 

Cassian lurched with her up the ramp of the _Kitehawk_ as quickly as possible, guided Jyn to her cabin and gently lowered her down on the berth. She inched her left hand over until her fingertips were tucked under his knee, but other than that she didn’t move. Her breath came shallowly. She must have felt his panic spike, because she mumbled, “Not that bad. Just sore.”

“Let me be the judge of that.” Cassian threw open the medkit and pawed through it, grabbing a basic diagnostic patch. It had to go on a large area of exposed skin, so he pushed up her shirt and rolled it over her lower ribs even though he couldn’t find anywhere on her torso that didn’t look bruised or scraped. It’d have to do. A glowing circle turned yellow and blinked to show that the patch was collecting data.

He smoothed her hair back from her face and whispered, “Jyn?” 

Her eyes opened slowly, glassy and distant, focusing on him with an effort. But her pupils didn’t look uneven. 

“I’m going to clean you up a little.”

She licked her lips and her chin dipped in a tiny nod.

Ripping open a couple of disinfectant wipes, he worked on her face first, gently pushing her hair off her forehead so that he could clean off the tacky drying blood. A small cut at her hairline, already clotting, was the source of it, and he sighed in relief. Scalp wounds bled like a stuck genteslug, so that was hopefully the worst of it. 

He moved down her nose, her cheeks, her chin, delicately wiping away the sweat and dirt and crust of drying blood on her face. Jyn sighed, a warm gust over his fingers, and her eyes blinked shut again. Cassian opened another wipe to clean the gash on her arm; luckily, it wasn’t deep enough to need adhesive, so he smoothed a bandage over it.

He worked silently on her hands next, carefully cleaning each scraped knuckle and broken nail. The room was small, and he’d set the ship controls to turn up the ambient heat for as long as possible, so it was getting warmer. Over the background current of circulating air, the sound of their breathing seemed loud and distinct. Jyn murmured something he couldn’t understand, her hand twitching in his grip, and he leaned closer. 

“...water?” 

“I’ll get you some.”

He was just getting back with a cup from the galley when the patch on her side chimed twice loudly to inform him it had finished its analysis. He lifted her shirt up again just far enough to read the various symbols on the smooth white flexiplast. No internal injuries detected, other than cracked ribs. Low likelihood of a concussion. Vital signs weak but within normal ranges, and already regaining strength. The overall diagnostic field glowed orange, indicating further medical attention was recommended as soon as possible, but still—nothing that a little bacta and some rest couldn’t fix.

He pulled her shirt down carefully. “Good news, Erso, you’ll live.” It came out less dry than he meant to. 

“Takes more than that,” she rasped, and her weak smile was brighter than his joke deserved.

He wrapped an arm around her and reeled her in for a quick hug, expecting her to take a moment of respite from their bond and then draw back. But instead, she slid both her arms around him and held on tight. When she pressed her head into his shoulder, he froze into stillness, not daring to move and disturb her. 

After spending so much time with each other, touching each other, sleeping in the same bed over the past few weeks, being close to Jyn shouldn't have had the power to affect him anymore. But Cassian was still aware of how much he wanted her; would always want her, as far as he was concerned, whether or not she felt the same. 

They stayed like that for a while, not talking, not moving, just breathing in a shared rhythm. The connection between them strengthened until it vibrated and hummed. Cassian would swear he could almost hear it as a steady background note. 

Jyn nestled closer into his shoulder and sighed; he could feel her warm exhale on his neck. Without conscious decision on his part his fingers moved, stroking through the tangled strands of her hair where it lay over her shoulders. He turned his head to rest his cheek against her hair and dropped a light kiss on the top of her head. His heart pounded so loudly he was sure she must be able to hear it. 

He felt her lips brush his throat: soft, warm, barely there but enough to send fire racing from that spot over his whole body.

 _Don't rush, Cassian_ , he ordered himself. _Go slow. Don't scare her away_. He gently pushed her hair back again and kissed her hairline. Then her forehead. 

She sat up, pulling away from him slowly, and with a sickening lurch in his stomach Cassian realized he’d pushed too far. He loosened his grip and prepared to let go. But she reached out to cup her hand gently over his cheek, caressing his face with her thumb. For a long time, they just looked at each other. The air between them still hummed, charged with power, and he knew she wanted him—was positive she knew he wanted her—but he didn’t know what she was thinking.


	4. Chapter 4

Jyn’s crystal hummed with a high, singing note that rose to the edge of her hearing. It warmed against her skin, and then suddenly was hot enough to burn. She jerked backward with a gasp of shock, though it cooled to the temperature of her skin again almost instantly. 

Cassian released her as though she’d been the one to burn his hands. “Sorry.”

She didn’t want to hear him try to explain why he didn’t want her. “Don’t apologize to me, Cassian. I’m sorry,” she bit out, glaring at him. Fucking Force, why did it have to do this to them? 

“About what?”

“This stupid bond. Maybe if we keep looking, we’ll find some way to break it, so you can be free.”

“What?” His head jerked up in a startled motion and he stared at her with what seemed like genuine surprise. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Because it wasn’t your choice. You don’t care about the Force, and I know you never wanted to be stuck with me.”

Cassian blinked and his mouth opened. Then he shut it and shook his head uncertainly. “That’s not it. You were promised your freedom. I didn’t want you to be trapped, and this bond—it ties you to me, even though you wanted to leave the Rebellion...”

How could he be connected to her, and still not understand? Then again, they’d been so careful not to intrude, trying to give each other as much privacy as possible in this impossible situation. Yearning, she lifted her hand, but was too afraid to touch him again, so it hung still in the air between them. Cassian reached out for it and took it between his own, cradling it gently. 

Jyn felt his warm fingers curl around hers, with all their scars and worn places touching her skin, and swallowed. “I don’t want to leave. But you hate being bonded, Cassian, I know you do. Do you think I can’t tell how you brace yourself every time I touch you? Or how every time I brush your mind, you flinch?”

He didn’t let go of her hand, only held it tighter. Turning it over, he bent his head to touch her knuckles with his mouth, pressing a kiss on each one. And with each brush of his lips, she felt his need for her. His desire. The air in the room thickened with want and her mouth went dry.

She twisted her hand in his to draw him closer. He looked up at her, and she didn’t know what he saw in her eyes, had no idea who moved first, but suddenly they were kissing so hard it almost hurt.

Jyn sank into the kiss for an endless moment. She didn’t think about anything, just let herself feel Cassian’s mouth moving over hers, the way she’d wanted it for so long. 

Something between them turned and settled, like an animal curling into its nest or an assembly snapping into a socket: melded them together with an indescribably perfect fit. Jyn melted into Cassian—all of him: his anger and his bitter hope and the raw edges he tried to hide—and felt him relax against her as he learned all of her in the same moment. She didn’t need to hide her despair or her guilt because he’d understand. And all of their secrets and hardened, ugly scars somehow didn’t matter when they could touch each other at this level, deep and instinctive. 

The kiss softened and they paused for a breath, letting their new knowledge lodge and settle inside. Jyn leaned forward, letting her forehead rest against Cassian’s. She pulled his hands up to kiss them in turn, thinking about all the things she’d seen them do, and everything that she’d sensed in him a moment ago.

“I promise I’ll never do it again,” she told him. “I’ll stay out of your head, and even if I learned something I’d never give it away.”

“That’s not it,” he said, shaking his head. He kissed her again, brief and sweet, smiling against her lips. “I trust you, Jyn. I believe you can keep my secrets. But I didn’t want you to see what’s inside me… every ugly thing I’d done.” 

“I have now.” Jyn cradled his face in her hands, searching his eyes for understanding. “And it doesn’t matter. Nothing you do is thoughtless or without a reason, Cassian. If it kept you alive, or kept the Rebellion alive, then it was important. I won’t say it was worth it, because I don’t know what the cost was, but I know it wasn’t done lightly.”

He nodded. “I’ll try to believe that. I have to, because I can tell you do even though I don’t understand it.”

She tucked her head into the crook of his shoulder, which felt like it was made to fit her, especially when Cassian wrapped his arm around her. Then his hand slid up the back of her neck, tangling in her hair, and Jyn was brought back to the purely physical with a shock. He pulled up her head and kissed her with a hunger that could have been frightening, except that she’d always known there was a part of him that could kiss like that, like scorching blaster fire and the breathless rush of hyperspace lines. 

She was just as avid for his taste, winding her arms around his back to hold him closer, crawling into his lap on the tiny bunk and gasping at the feel of him beneath her. Clothes were a hindrance, rid of as quickly as possible so that she could get her hands on more of him.

“Please?” Her words came out on a gasp of harsh breath; she could feel the tension in his shoulders under her hands.

Cassian pressed his mouth to her throat, whispering, "You don't need to ask." She could feel the words form in his head, on her skin, almost as much as she heard them.

"Yes, I do." 

"Can't you feel it?" he asked. 

Yes, she could feel how much he wanted her; and not just physically, as her hands explored his body, but with the odd, sixth Cassian-sense she’d developed over these past weeks. Want was one thing, though, and staying was another. 

"I can, but I still want to be sure." Jyn pulled back to look at him, searching for any sign of hesitation or uncertainty in his amber eyes. 

“I’m sure, if you are.” And he stroked her thighs with his warm hands, moving slowly up and down. “But there’s no rush,” he said. “I’ve done desperate, I’ve done ‘we could die tomorrow.’ I don’t want that. We don’t have to be desperate today.” 

He smiled, slow and sweet, and Jyn felt the undercurrent of Cassian’s emotion again. It was always there, under whatever else he was thinking, and she found herself sinking into it, letting the sense of absolute trust settle in to her.

And Jyn realized—it was love. Maybe they’d use the word one day and maybe they never would. But she knew what it meant. 

“Speak for yourself,” Jyn said, teasing. “I’m desperate.” She let herself spill out a little of the desire brimming inside her body, like sweet honey wine, pouring from her. She heard Cassian’s breath catch, then felt him shudder as she kept stroking his cock. 

Everything clicked: slotted into place perfectly with no sharp edges. Jyn was marvellously alive, and so joyously happy she could have floated up like zero-gravity. 

Once, when she was with the Partisans, Jyn had dislocated her elbow, and when it was twisted back into place the sensation was like this. Everything previously awkward and painful was now smooth and easy. The bond felt like swimming through a flowing current, like the sensation of knowing someone was in the room next to you, like dancing—how would Jyn know? she’d never danced—but she knew the feeling of being swept up in a motion that carried you through a joyful pattern. It was a sense memory from Cassian’s childhood, she realized, one that he’d treasured for years.

Jyn was so wet, she’d been wet since they started kissing, she’d be embarrassed if she didn’t know that Cassian was just as desperate for her. She knew she was going to come as soon as he filled her aching, needy body—she could feel it—or maybe that was Cassian’s knowledge, and she set her hands on his hips, pulling him toward her, reassuring him that was what she wanted, to feel him inside her.

She sank down on Cassian slowly, as slowly and steadily as he pushed up into her, and their long inhales echoed each other. He filled her completely and for a moment they were still. She dipped her head again to rest against his and took a long breath just to feel the way absolutely nothing separated them now; they were pressed together along every micron of their bodies.

His hands were warm on her hips. He skimmed his fingers up to trace the sides of her breasts, over her shoulder blades, down her back to her hips again and dug them in, encouraging her to move against him. 

Jyn could already feel the pressure building inside her and at the base of her spine, a thundercloud of pleasure that was about to crackle through her like lightning. She tilted her hips to glory in the way they moved together and how Cassian’s cock dragged through her, every single millimetre of it firing new sensations. And with the next shift of his hips, she shattered.

She might have been embarrassed except that it brought Cassian off, too, and she could feel his own orgasm, in her body and her mind. The pleasure echoed and reflected like a weird kind of feedback loop that passed between the two of them until she wasn’t sure who had come first after all, dissolving in the warm satiated feeling of bliss.

The next morning, Jyn woke late, rising slowly to the surface of consciousness. It was amazing how good she felt; of course, she knew even before opening her eyes that Cassian was there. His presence in her mind was a warm, steady glow, like a light held cupped in two hands, glowing through her and suffusing her with a sense of well-being. She couldn’t remember ever being so marvellously comfortable, except perhaps a few times as a child, long ago when she was still enveloped in the love of her parents.

Everything was peaceful. Cassian was still asleep and she lay quietly, looking at him, trying to understand how fate and the Force had brought them to this place. She was tempted to lift her hand and trace his features—jawline, lips, the sharp nose with its pronounced bump—learning him all over again. But she didn’t want to wake him. His breathing was soft and slow, and he slept with one arm folded over his head, endearingly childlike.

“I’m not asleep,” he said with a hint of laughter. His eyes blinked open and found hers unerringly. “You can touch me as much as you want.” 

She took him at his word, and that led to another hour or more spent moving together in pleasure. Which answered another of Jyn’s questions: whether the sex yesterday had been a fluke. Apparently not. 

“What now?” she asked eventually, curled against him to tuck her head in the Jyn-shaped nook between his chin and chest again. 

“Well, I think we can mark this place down as a possibility for a new base,” Cassian said. “Nothing long term, but for a short stay while we regroup, look for something more permanent. The old mining shafts could make good hangars and storage vaults.”

She lifted her head and grinned at him. “I mean, what are we going to tell Draven?”

“That we’ve worked it out.” He shrugged. “The bond feels… different now. Steadier. I think we could be farther apart, don’t you?”

Jyn considered the feeling of the current flowing between them, and agreed. They should probably still test it, since she’d prefer concrete evidence to a vague impression. But she thought Cassian was right: if they were to be separated now, it would be okay. Any pain would be more emotional than physical. She wasn’t worried about blinding headaches and pain any longer; she felt better than she had in years, with a joyful lightness in her chest that threatened to bubble up and break out in smiles.

Her crystal flared warm again; she tugged on the cord to pull it away from her skin, and gasped in surprise.

The cracked, cloudy crystal had mended itself somehow: it was clear and whole, the only marks on it the etched injunction to trust in the Force. And it seemed more radiant than Jyn had ever seen it before, with a bright thread of golden light caught in its heart. 

“What happened?” Cassian asked, his gaze focused on the pendant slowly spiralling on its cord.

“It’s healed,” Jyn said in wonder. And that word seemed the most fitting, as though the crystal were a living thing. “But I don’t know why.”

Cassian touched the crystal with a fingertip, stopping its motion. “If having sex mended it, does that mean Bodhi was wrong?” he asked. 

She shook her head, instinctively. “I don’t think it was the sex. Or, not just the sex,” she amended. “I think it was accepting the bond at last. Both of us together, instead of trying to resist it, or ignore it…”

Cassian smiled at her and she could feel his happiness like sunlight, like a caress on her skin.

Strangely, Jyn wasn’t afraid any longer. Since last night, she knew how Cassian felt for her, and she trusted in that feeling. After all her second-guessing, it was amazing, but she’d had no doubts at all from the moment he kissed her. Sometimes your heart could be sure despite all the caution in your head. Whatever might break them apart—and there were many things in this universe that could—it wouldn’t be their choice. 

He was what he was, and she knew all of him—he’d finally let her see him. And he’d let her see that he loved her, and trusted her. She trusted him in return. There was no more reason to be afraid—of the galaxy and all the darkness and danger in it, maybe, but not of Cassian, who felt like the other half of her soul. 

“I still don’t think it makes any sense,” he said. “But in the end, no matter why it happened… I'm glad it did.” 

He reached out and took her hand, and the warmth that flared through her at his touch kindled in her crystal. “ _I_ choose you, Jyn—not the Force. Me. Even if this disappears tomorrow, I’m still with you.”

“Well, I do believe in the Force. But more importantly, I believe in you.” Jyn leaned forward, her hair falling down around them, and kissed him softly, her lips lingering on his. “And I’m with you too. All the way.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone who said they were looking forward to this story when I was doubtful and discouraged about finishing it. And a million thanks to **moranice** and **fulcrumstardust** for lightning-fast beta-reading and pointing out several places where I’d veered off course. Any remaining detours are my responsibility.


End file.
